Neo-con media psy-ops and Amir Taheri: Here we go again

As some of you may recall, last May Canada's leading neo-con media outlet The National Post hammered the final nail into the coffin of their already minimal credibility by publishing articles claiming that the Iranian government was planning to force Iranian Jews and other non-Muslims to wear identifying badges JUST LIKE THE NAZIS DID!!!

Within hours the story had been discredited and the National Post was forced to retract it and ultimately make a grudging apology.

The source for the story was Amir Taheri, an Iranian who was the editor of Iran's largest newspaper under the Shah and is currently a client of Benador and Associates, the leading Neo-con pr firm. The Nation revealed that the whole thing was almost certainly a deliberate psy-op on a par with the classic 'Iraqi soldiers shot Kuwaiti babies in incubators' bunkum that helped sell Gulf War I.

This week ABC News was forced to admit that one of its consultants/reporters Alexis Debat was apparently a serial liar who had faked a PhD, lied on his resume and fabricated interviews with figures like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, former UN chief Kofi Anan and former head of the federal reserve Alan Greenspan.

The Taheri connection? The false interviews were printed in French neo-con journal Politique Internationale, which Amir Taheri was listed as editor of,from 2001 to 2006. As Attywood points out many of the made up interviews with fake inflammatory quotes were with noted opponents of the neo-con agenda.

Debat was the primary source for the recent story about major bombing operations planned for Iran. Was this story true? Was it intended to increase the drumbeats for war with Iran?

There were warnings last week that a big push for war with Iran would be rolled out through various neo-con think tanks and White House friendly media outlets this week. Was this just one of the more blatant lines of attack?